Month: July 2003

Risk vs Vegas

looky

What are the odds of winning a battle in Risk ? (I’m talking about “classic” Risk now, not “Risk 2210“).

I was actually calculating all these out myself, and then I realised- “duh- this is the internet- someone has definitely already done this and posted it online!”

So here’s the info, taken from the Probabilities section from the RISK FAQ.

Defender rolls 2 dice
(2 or more armies)		 Defender rolls 1 die
(1 army)
Attacker rolls 3 dice
(4 or more armies)
  • Att lose 2: 29.26%
  • Def lose 2: 37.17%
  • Both lose 1: 33.58%
  • Att lose 1: 34.03%
  • Def lose 1: 65.97%
Attacker rolls 2 dice
(3 armies)
  • Att lose 2: 44.83%
  • Def lose 2: 22.76%
  • Both lose 1: 32.41%
  • Att lose 1: 42.13%
  • Def lose 1: 57.87%
Attacker rolls 1 die
(2 armies)
  • Att lose 1: 74.54%
  • Def lose 1: 25.46%
  • Att lose 1: 58.33%
  • Def lose 1: 41.67%

If you’re more of a completist, there is Scott Bartell’s RiskOdds Calculator, which shows you the complete odds for an entire battle, with an option to choose how many armies have to die before the attacker gives up.

See also Scott’s FAQ about the calculator.

3vs2.gif 3vs1.gif
2vs2.gif 2vs1.gif
1vs2.gif 1vs1.gif

Strange Change

looky

One of the weirdest toys I ever had? Easily the Strange Change. It was an electric heater with plastic monsters… you warmed up the monsters and when they were soft you compressed them into little cubes. Then when you heated the cubes up at a later date they expanded again into the monsters!

Recently I’ve discovered that you got a bunch of the creatures with the set… but you could also buy more creatures in little cardboard-backed blister packs. Sometimes the creatures would be in their square “Time Capsule“ form so I guess you wouldn’t necessarily know what kind they were!

Virtual Vikki has a great description with pictures, and there’s another good set of photos at Sam’s Toy Box. And yes, I still have this thing in my garage.

KIRBY: ya ever notice how these things have a dangerous resemblance to now’n’laters?
BRIAN: I have noticed that. Funny isn’t it?
KIRBY: maybe that’s why they stopped making them
KIRBY: too many kids were either eating the plastic, or caught the set on fire by putting a now’n’later on the hot plate
KIRBY: where’d we get our set anyway?
BRIAN: temple garage sale
KIRBY: oooh
KIRBY: yea I didnt think the parents would shell out for that
KIRBY: it was probably $20 new or something
BRIAN: besides it was a toy from the 1960’s!
KIRBY: oh
KIRBY: I didn’t realize it was that old
BRIAN: yeah when we were kids most of the really dangerous toys were gone already

Sterling Holloway

looky

Today’s trivia: Sterling Holloway, voice actor.

Yes, you know him. He’s the original voice of Winnie the Pooh.
He was the narrator on tons of Disney cartoons, like say Mickey and the Beanstalk.

Here’s an article about him with a picture. An intersting snippet:

Ironically, for the actor whose voice was to be his fortune, it was the advent of sound that drove him, however temporarily, from Hollywood. “I came to Hollywood at a bad time. The movies were in a state of turmoil,” he later recalled. “Sound was coming in and silents were going out. I made a silent two-reel comedy called The Fighting Kangaroo. Then I did a silent feature, Casey at the Bat, with Wallace Beery for Paramount, and all of a sudden I was a has-been. Nobody thought I was suitable for talkies. I didn’t feel so bad when I heard about John Gilbert. So I returned to New York.”

Moment of Zen #1

looky

SHAC: GEEEZ they have lotsa ads in their registration process
BRIAN: yeh well whatcha gonna do
SHAC: fuk i think i may have left the “please send me my free $5 hooker in the mail” box checked
BRIAN: dumbass

Wasn’t there a Simpsons like this?

looky

From Yahoo’s AP feed:

TOKYO – After selling 300,000 pet-lovers on the Bowlingual gadget that
supposedly translates a dog’s bark into human language, a toymaker hopes to
parlay that success into a new hit product: Meowlingual.

The cat-shaped machine set to go on sale in Japan in November translates
meows and purrs into human phrases such as “I can’t stand it,” although
exact wording hasn’t been decided yet, Tokyo-based Takara Co. said
Wednesday.

Where are the blind fat people?

looky

According to a friend, there have been studies linking obesity with an inability to recognise real hunger symptoms:

“…these doctors did these tests…locked one group of normal weight people in a room, and another group of obese people in another. gave both groups only a simple sugar syrup to eat. the normal group ate their usual daily caloric intake of the syrup; ate when they were hungry. the obese people, lacking visual cues, ate hardly anything at all. ”

The implication being that the obese people were becoming hungry primarily through visual cues.